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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> Shen’s proposed solution: a judicial health-assessment program that would collect cognitive data when a judge is nominated and in follow-ups every five years. The results of that testing would remain private and confidential, according to Shen.

I’d love if all elected officials were mandated to disclose all the medications they are taking. At least let us know who in Congress is taking Alzheimer’s medication.

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That creates a perverse incentive to not take medication. I.e. we'd end up where we are now, but with unmedicated people.

I do think psychiatric evaluations make sense, especially for judges. They can really mess someone's life up, and theoretically the judgement would be overturned on appeal, but that's little solace to someone that spent 6 months in jail while the appeal happened.

One problem with this strategy is that such evaluations are relatively subjective. Like everything else in government, the process would become stacked with politically motivated individuals that have an agenda, and the judiciary would ultimately be biased according to their whims.

Oh definitely. My offhand idea would be to do a sort of jury selection. Pick 20 random psychiatrists from the AMA roster, let each side remove 5, and have the remaining 10 submit evaluations. I think if a majority (so 6) find them incompetent to be a judge, there should be some form of citizens voting on whether to keep them or not. Not state legislators, but actual citizens.

Well that and the fact that the judge could just rule such evaluations unconstitutional.

See: aviation and the FAA

Wouldn't that likely result in there being no neurodivergent judges? It would undermine the whole idea of "trial by peers" if neurodivergent people are being tried purely by neurotypical people.

It’s “a jury of peers” - that line says nothing about judges. And indeed, judges have very little in common with the common person they see in court.

Sure, but it's still not really a democracy if the people judging or representing you don't reflect you.

I mean, 70+ years old judges don't represent or reflect people between ages of 20-30 either, but appointing people of that age to be judges isn't the solution. And that's ok. There are no judges representing people with borderline personality disorder, and I don't think this is a problem in need of a solution either. That's what the jury is for.

Why limit it to congress? I suspect there may be a high-level elected official in the executive branch that is also using such medication.

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